Region Names and Colors

SAOtng can associate names with region markers in order to
aid users in remembering the significance of the region.
You can use the same name with multiple regions, thus creating
classes of regions instead of individually named regions. Region
marker retrieval and deletion can act on these classes or in
individually named regions.

By default, marker regions that you create in SAOtng are defined to be
either "source" regions or "background" regions and are colored green
and red, respectively. ("Include" and "exclude" variations of these
regions are delineated with solid and dotted lines.) This type name
is controlled by the "Set Type (and Color)" option in the
marker menu (activated using the right mouse button within a region).

When these markers are retrieved via the "regions" public access
point, their region name is specified as a comment after the region:

When a file containing the regions is loaded into SAOtng, the region types
are again given the appropriate colors, as described below.

Regions can be retrieved (or deleted) by name using glob-style pattern
matching. For example, if you name a set of regions using the same
name "source" then you can retrieve all of these regions using:

Note that patterns must be enclosed in quotes to avoid problems with
the shell.

Colors can be associated with names for regions. An initial set of
name/color associations can be specified using the
-rnames command switch. This switch takes a file of region
names/colors as an argument. It tells SAOtng to associate a new set
of names with the specified colors. For example:

will associate colors with 3 new classes of objects. The
"Set Type (and Color)" menu will contain these 3 types instead of
the default "source" and "background", and xpaget will return these
names as object types. Note that names containing whitespace must
be enclosed in quotes. Names and colors are separated by whitespace.
Valid colors are black, white, red, green, blue, cyan, yellow,
magenta, purple, and darkslategray.

It is possible to change the name/color associations on the fly using
the "Edit Region/Color Association" menu option in the
Markers menu. Use ^N to move forward between lines and ^P to
move back. You can edit the names and/or colors. You can add a new
name by typing ^M and (which adds a blank line), ^P to back up to that
line, and then insert the name/color pair, separated by whitespace. The
"Update Markers to Current Association" menu option will change the
current markers to match the new color specification. (Of course, all
markers created from then on will utilize the new name/color
association.)

If a region name is used for which no color is defined, the associated
region marker is given a default color (which is either green or the
first color in a list of names/color associations). Thus, for example,
you can load a set of markers such as: